The San Jose Fire Department needs to stop arriving late for medical emergencies. That’s the message Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian is trying to send to the city, and he’s right.

This isn’t AAA coming to change a tire. Timely response can be a matter of life and death. It should be a high priority for public safety, but it is not as high a priority in San Jose. And people won’t be aware of that until they suddenly need help in the throes of a heart attack or stroke.

The city’s response time for emergencies needs to be part of budget discussions this spring — and on the debate agendas in the mayor and city council races. People need to understand what’s at stake.

The county pays fire departments to be the first responders to medical emergencies, which are a county responsibility. Simitian recently discovered that San Jose was not meeting the terms of the five-year contract it signed in 2011 stipulating the nationally-accepted standard of reaching at least 90 percent of emergencies within eight minutes.

Every other fire department in the county meets the standard, several of them at a rate of 95 percent or more. But San Jose has not met it for 14 months and may never have met it, officials admit, having discovered in 2012 that past record keeping had been faulty.

On top of that, the department, following a round of budget cuts, re-set its goal at just 80 percent of arrivals within eight minutes.

The late arrivals, by county standards, average one per hour. There is no documentation that they have cost lives, but it’s a roll of the dice San Jose residents are taking and the rest of the county is not.

The county contracts separately with Rural Metro to provide ambulance service when it’s needed in addition to firefighter-paramedics. It holds the ambulance company to the same national standard, and failure to meet it several times last year put the entire contract in jeopardy.

San Jose’s contract pays $2.1 million a year to cover both costs and as an incentive to meet the 90 percent standard. Simitian wants the county to withhold paying San Jose until the city demonstrates it is taking action to consistently meet the standard. He acknowledges withholding the funds could result in even worse service. The city and county need to hash this out.

San Jose’s budget struggles are well known. In July, 2010, the fire department lost seven engine companies, or roughly two dozen firefighters, which has hurt its response times. But it signed the county contract after that.

The fire department argues the 90 percent standard is arbitrary. If that were true, it would not be as widely accepted. It is complex, figuring in, for example, the numbers of calls that are not life threatening and won’t require as quick a response. And did we mention every other fire department hereabouts seems to have no problem meeting it?

The city council needs to rethink the 80 percent standard that is shortchanging people who live or work in San Jose. And if residents think they deserve better, they need to speak up. In an election year, officials will listen.